Just read this article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/07/31/new-evidence-suggests-young-children-spread-covid-19-more-efficiently-than-adults/?fbclid=IwAR349a-dqVh_PA2LFr_NwtsZFbzrKi8tma585-ITfKtYXfevoTl8jSSUksA#2bf62ea219fd that says that younger children have a much higher viral load than adults, and therefore thought to be major spreaders. But so far we haven't seen much evidence of that, and have in fact seen evidence to the contrary in many places.

How could this be? Any doctors want to weigh in?

A lot of these articles are popping up. I'd love to hear from some doctors as well. I am a director at a preschool in Austin and my school board decided to not open in September. Many of our board members will site articles like these to "back up" their decisions for not opening. It is very frustrating.

I promise you if you were closer to NB you would be packed. I'm very sorry for the hardship. This year sucks

That makes sense! Thank you! So schools are probably fairly safe as long as symptomatic kids stay home...

BiochemAg97 said:

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To start with, they excluded asymptomatic patients.

symptomatic kids have higher viral loads than symptomatic adults... but if most kids are asymptomatic does that really tell you anything.

Asymptomatic people have lower viral loads than symptomatic people, so the bulk of kids (who are asymptomatic) likely still have viral loads lower than adults with symptoms.

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The Italian study came to a similar conclusion via contact tracing. A similar conclusion by two studies conducted by separate entities using completely different methods.

BiochemAg97 said:

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To start with, they excluded asymptomatic patients.

symptomatic kids have higher viral loads than symptomatic adults... but if most kids are asymptomatic does that really tell you anything.

Asymptomatic people have lower viral loads than symptomatic people, so the bulk of kids (who are asymptomatic) likely still have viral loads lower than adults with symptoms.

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https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2768952

They excluded asymptomatic patients from all three age groups so it's not like they were biasing the results. The way to interpret the results are: Among people who are symptomatic, young children have the highest amounts.

Edit: From some comments on the article, it appears the researchers didn't use a good measurement device

So it takes a lot of virus for kids to be symptomatic, but the vast majority have little virus compared to adults?

We know in adults as well the viral load correlates with severity.

BiochemAg97 said:

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AggieSarah01 said:

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That makes sense! Thank you! So schools are probably fairly safe as long as symptomatic kids stay home...

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That is what the data from Europe suggest.

Now, how to convince parents to keep their symptomatic kids at home instead of bringing them to school...

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This is the monster issue.

The beaches open and people flood into them, bars open, same. Schools open, no way in hell am I not sending my kid with "allergies" in today.

BiochemAg97 said:

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AggieSarah01 said:

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That makes sense! Thank you! So schools are probably fairly safe as long as symptomatic kids stay home...

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That is what the data from Europe suggest.

Now, how to convince parents to keep their symptomatic kids at home instead of bringing them to school...

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Parents drug their kids in advance of sending them to school as it is. I don't think covid is going to change is going to change that very much. It may make it worse as kids will be able to carry around their meds with them all day now.

AggieSarah01 said:

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That makes sense! Thank you! So schools are probably fairly safe as long as symptomatic kids stay home...

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You are aware people are definitely contagious several days prior to being symptomatic right? It's impossible to "avoid" sick kids who aren't sick yet but are contagious.

Not enough blue stars for this post.

BadMoonRisin said:

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agmom95 said:

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A lot of these articles are popping up. I'd love to hear from some doctors as well. I am a director at a preschool in Austin and my school board decided to not open in September. Many of our board members will site articles like these to "back up" their decisions for not opening. It is very frustrating.

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Maybe the school board should use scientific studies or CDC recommendations instead of news articles? Just a thought.

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I think it cute you assume people are even reading the articles. I'm no longer surprised to read a headline that hyper-sensationalizes the information in the article or even outright contradicts the information presented. Way too often the real information is buried closer to the end of the article often after an advertisement that you have to scroll past.

bay fan said:

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AggieSarah01 said:

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That makes sense! Thank you! So schools are probably fairly safe as long as symptomatic kids stay home...

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You are aware people are definitely contagious several days prior to being symptomatic right? It's impossible to "avoid" sick kids who aren't sick yet but are contagious.

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I think several days is an exaggeration. Have read you are likely to start spreading the virus 24-72 hours before showing symptoms. Still problematic, but not several days.

tysker said:

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BiochemAg97 said:

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AggieSarah01 said:

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That makes sense! Thank you! So schools are probably fairly safe as long as symptomatic kids stay home...

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That is what the data from Europe suggest.

Now, how to convince parents to keep their symptomatic kids at home instead of bringing them to school...

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Parents drug their kids in advance of sending them to school as it is. I don't think covid is going to change is going to change that very much. It may make it worse as kids will be able to carry around their meds with them all day now.

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"Oh you feel a little warm this morning, here take some Tylenol to knock your fever down."

BBQ4Me said:

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BiochemAg97 said:

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To start with, they excluded asymptomatic patients.

symptomatic kids have higher viral loads than symptomatic adults... but if most kids are asymptomatic does that really tell you anything.

Asymptomatic people have lower viral loads than symptomatic people, so the bulk of kids (who are asymptomatic) likely still have viral loads lower than adults with symptoms.

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https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2768952

They excluded asymptomatic patients from all three age groups so it's not like they were biasing the results. The way to interpret the results are: Among people who are symptomatic, young children have the highest amounts.

Edit: From some comments on the article, it appears the researchers didn't use a good measurement device

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Yes they excluded all asymptomatic people. Given they only had 3 and to properly look at viral loads of asymptomatic people, they would have needed to analyze them separately anyway. They didn't have enough to do that with their data set. I did not mean to suggest they were being biased in their a analysis, simply that the data presented is incomplete.

My point is that if taking a question like "do kids spread it more than adults" you need to look at the whole population of infected kids and the whole population of infected adults. Excluding the asymptomatic population, especially if kids are more likely to be asymptotic, means you cannot draw a conclusion about kids in school spreading more or less than adults in an office. Also, the environments are different (typically more distance in an office than a classroom) so not really easy to do a theoretical comparison.

Jmiller said:

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BiochemAg97 said:

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To start with, they excluded asymptomatic patients.

symptomatic kids have higher viral loads than symptomatic adults... but if most kids are asymptomatic does that really tell you anything.

Asymptomatic people have lower viral loads than symptomatic people, so the bulk of kids (who are asymptomatic) likely still have viral loads lower than adults with symptoms.

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The Italian study came to a similar conclusion via contact tracing. A similar conclusion by two studies conducted by separate entities using completely different methods.

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Do you have a link to the Italian study?

It's the next political battle. We've already been made to chose sides on HCQ and masks, so let's draw another line in the sand.

From my look at the data and what the CDC recommends there isn't an issue.

It's linked in the forbes article.

Kids spread the virus. There was some thought early on that because of the lower rate of symptoms appearing, there would be less spread as kids 'appeared' to be not good carriers. With recent studies we are seeing that line of thinking probably doesn't hold water as kids = adults in terms of amount of virus detectable by PCR. They are no different than any other age group in this regard. Whether kids spread "more" or "less" than adults is kinda irrelevant as the main question is "will spreading among kids and then their households occur?" and that answer is yes.

There are several different issues involving the school debate and they all kinda get mixed together in this discussion. One issue is safety for kids alone, the other is safety to their households and finally the last is contribution to another rise in cases and eventual deaths with opening another avenue for spreading events.

For the last topic, I view it in terms of wildfires. If you heard on the news that "wildfire x is 50% contained" that means we both making progress to contain it but it could still go the other way and is dangerous. I think with the current numbers we are right around that "50% contained" mark. Room for progress and continued decrease in numbers, but still can go the other way. Why would we want, then, to shift conditions to uncontainable again when we are just getting ahold of things? It makes no sense. Discussion might be different if this were mid-May again, but its not.

Jmiller said:

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It's linked in the forbes article.

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Thanks missed it the first time since I just went straight to the other article.

The Italy study is interesting. On the one hand, the chance of a child (0-14) is the lowest (8.6%) of all age groups (average across all age groups of 13.3%).

The data on contacts (children are 22.4% contagious) is less reliable for children. There were 14 total children with 49 contacts and 11 getting infected. Compare to the next smallest sample 25-29 with 118 cases, 475 contacts, and 62 new infections. It is possible the high % for children is just due to small numbers and a statistical anomaly.

I would also posit that given everyone was in lockdown during most of this time period and spread was dominated by same household (500 of the 890 contacts who became infected were from same household contact), the higher rate of infectiousness for the children could be attributed to a greater need for care from others in the household and thus more contact. It can be very difficult to isolate a child from healthy people in the family who need to provide care. Unless very sick, adults can generally self care and potentially isolate to another room with limited contact for receiving food/water. Young children cannot self care in isolation from the rest of the family.

Even if we accept the children spread more conclusion, children also get it less. That doesn't give a clear answer on the likeliness of spread in a classroom like setting.

Ranger,

Something I have been reading about and thinking about is how it may be possible that children carry similar viral loads as adults but spread it less. Some theories I have seen are that since small kids (<9) are physically short, their breathing/talking/sneezing/coughing is also at a low level/elevation compared to adults and therefore more likely to fall harmlessly to the ground and not be contagious. That might also explain why teenagers transmit at similar rates to adults.

Another thing that was theorized is that small children have smaller lungs and expel a smaller volume of air when they breathe. The volume of air being expelled by contagious people might be a factor in the likelihood of spread, which is why the singing/shouting/heavy breathing is a common feature of many super spreader events. Another feature that would make teenagers similar to adults in transmissiveness.

If these theories hold true, it may explain why small children could be poor transmitters in family settings, in studies such as the South Korea contact tracing. Then you have to wonder if putting small children with other small children makes the transmission more effective.

HotardAg07 said:

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Ranger,

Something I have been reading about and thinking about is how it may be possible that children carry similar viral loads as adults but spread it less. Some theories I have seen are that since small kids (<9) are physically short, their breathing/talking/sneezing/coughing is also at a low level/elevation compared to adults and therefore more likely to fall harmlessly to the ground and not be contagious. That might also explain why teenagers transmit at similar rates to adults.

Another thing that was theorized is that small children have smaller lungs and expel a smaller volume of air when they breathe. The volume of air being expelled by contagious people might be a factor in the likelihood of spread, which is why the singing/shouting/heavy breathing is a common feature of many super spreader events. Another feature that would make teenagers similar to adults in transmissiveness.

If these theories hold true, it may explain why small children could be poor transmitters in family settings, in studies such as the South Korea contact tracing. Then you have to wonder if putting small children with other small children makes the transmission more effective.

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I saw some headline but didn't read the study that tall people were higher risk.

Beat40 said:

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bay fan said:

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AggieSarah01 said:

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That makes sense! Thank you! So schools are probably fairly safe as long as symptomatic kids stay home...

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You are aware people are definitely contagious several days prior to being symptomatic right? It's impossible to "avoid" sick kids who aren't sick yet but are contagious.

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I think several days is an exaggeration. Have read you are likely to start spreading the virus 24-72 hours before showing symptoms. Still problematic, but not several days.

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24 hours=1 day, 72 hours=3 days. 1-3 is several in my book.

bay fan said:

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Beat40 said:

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bay fan said:

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AggieSarah01 said:

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That makes sense! Thank you! So schools are probably fairly safe as long as symptomatic kids stay home...

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You are aware people are definitely contagious several days prior to being symptomatic right? It's impossible to "avoid" sick kids who aren't sick yet but are contagious.

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I think several days is an exaggeration. Have read you are likely to start spreading the virus 24-72 hours before showing symptoms. Still problematic, but not several days.

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24 hours=1 day, 72 hours=3 days. 1-3 is several in my book.

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I wasn't trying to say you were wrong about the difficulty of avoiding people who can transmit the virus without showing symptoms. Most people, as is typical nomenclature in our country, take several days as 5-7+. Just thought the difference between 2-3 and 5-7+ was significant enough in terms of transmission to bring up.

Anyway, I was just laying out the reasoning for my comment to you so you know why I chose to engage. I don't really care to argue about several versus a couple, versus a few, versus many.